HTC One M8′s Duo Cam now allows others to refocus your photos

Have you ever felt the need to edit photos when viewing someone else’s gallery because you wanted to focus on something else in the photo? HTC One M8 and its Duo Cam technology now allows you to do something like that to a certain extent with their newest feature, social editing. This means your friends and loved ones who have access to photos taken with the Duo Cam can now tweak it according to what they want to actually look at in your picture.

The Duo Cam system of HTC’s flagship phone uses a secondary camera to support the main rear-facing one. It is a lower-resolution sensor that is slightly offset with the main camera so it is able to capture the deeper depth when taking pictures that have many elements. It also allows users to make Lytro-style focus changes even when the picture has been taken already with its UFocus feature. The Foregrounder effect meanwhile lets you change the main subject of the photo, therefore changing the effect of the overall picture as well. The Dimension Plus feature pans and tilts within the picture itself in a 3D version of the frame. You can save the photo from whatever angle you want after you’ve changed the view.

When the Duo Cam system was revealed in HTC One M8, only the photographer himself could use these effects if he’s not satisfied with the one he took. But now other users can also do so. The photo is uploaded to the Google Drive and is shared through a browser-based version of the HTC Gallery app where your friends can now tweak the photos to their heart’s (eyes’) desire.

However, if you’d like to keep your photos as it is without the interference of your (nosy) well-meaning friends, you can choose not to upload it to the Gallery. You have the option of just sharing the photo through any social network and of course, this cannot be adjusted by other people anymore. You can download the HTC Gallery app through the Google Play Store.